Emily might marry her John; and Blanche would either make a fortune in her own right or manipulate some unsuspecting but well-heeled gentleman to the altar. She and Edward would probably end their days as he often surmised: old maids the pair of them, reliving happier moments either side of a shared hearth.
Four
From the Mansion House at one end to the church of St Michael at the other, Coney Street was filled with the kind of expensive establishment that attracted county families to the city, and the latest arrivistes who sought to camouflage their humble origins. Crested carriages with liveried coachmen dropped ladies and gentlemen at the doors of milliners and outfitters, their shoes unsullied by the snow of less exalted streets.
Among the fashionable crowds strolling along the cleared pavements, Louisa felt like an orphan in her old skirt and cloak. Her chin lifted in unconscious defiance as she thought of Blanche and how she would wince when she saw her less than modish sister.
Blanche had risen, at the age of twenty-four, to the dizzy heights of senior seamstress to one of the most exclusive dressmakers in town. Her early affinity for good clothes and fine materials had developed into a corresponding flair for innovation and design. That Blanche’s talents had gone to her head was indisputable; there were times, Louisa thought, when her arrogance knew no bounds. From time to time she increased her salary by threatening to take her considerable expertise elsewhere, which drove her employer into paroxysms of rage.
The emaciated and dragon-like Miss Devine might rule her clients like a mandarin, but she made little impression on Blanche Elliott, who could match her demented outbursts shriek for shriek. But Blanche had no real intentions of leaving. As Louisa was well aware, a desire for security was almost her sister’s only weakness, although her desire to quit the family home had overcome even that. She now had rooms in a boarding house for young ladies on the other side of town.
Louisa passed the discreet frontage of Miss Devine’s, a small Regency doorway and single half-bow window that belied the depths of the rooms behind. She entered a narrow passage which led eventually to a tiny yard shared by several adjoining properties. Like all these backs leading down to the river, the building was much older than the face-lifted front it presented to the world, and the steps she mounted were concave with age. In the enclosed yard the air was dank; ancient bricks, unwarmed by the sun, gave off a miasma that reeked of privies and successive river floodings.
A young girl answered the door, face pale, eyes red-rimmed and squinting. Ten years ago Blanche had looked like that; seeing her now, across the room, it was hard to believe. Taller than Emily, she resembled her younger sister in features and colouring, but whereas Emily was soft with a tendency to plumpness, Blanche’s elegant figure was honed to a whipcord slenderness.
Her intense dark eyes registered surprise and annoyance as she saw her sister. Sharply, she ordered the girl back to her work.
‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed, at the same time taking in her sister’s appearance with a single, horrified glance.
Louisa’s chin came up; she glared back at Blanche.
‘Is it Mamma? I suppose it is,’ Blanche muttered. ‘You’d better come in and sit down.’ Skirting dressmaker’s dummies, two large cutting-out tables and four sewing machines from which part-made gowns cascaded in a riot of shimmering colour, Blanche pushed aside the piece of crystal embroidery on which she had been working. ‘Now,’ she said crisply, pulling out a chair, ‘what’s happened?’
‘Mamma’s ill and wants to see you. That’s all. You were informed yesterday, and I do think you might’ve called to see her, even if you can’t stay to help.’
‘Of course I can’t stay to help. I can’t possibly be spared here — you can see for yourself the work we have to get out.’
‘Why didn’t you just look in last night? Surely Gillygate isn’t that far out of your way?’
‘I had to work late,’ Blanche replied defensively, earning herself a disbelieving look. There was a constant but uneven chatter from the machines, bursts of frantic treadling followed by short pauses as the women adjusted the satins and silks they joined together. Louisa cast a glance round the room. Although the women looked busy, two cutting tables were empty. The fact that Blanche was whiling away her time with a piece of embroidery gave the lie to what she said.
‘I trust you won’t be working late tonight?’
Blanche had the grace to look abashed. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I have an appointment later.’
‘Then cancel it.’
She came to visit that evening, and the next; but it cut Louisa to the quick to see how their mother’s eyes lit up with Blanche’s arrival. In the kitchen, when she went down, they were pondering the same subject.
‘She comes in here,’ Emily was saying, ‘dressed like a dog’s dinner, full of poor Mamma this, and poor Mamma that. Fat lot she cares!’
‘Well, at least Mamma seems a little better this evening,’ Louisa remarked. ‘We should be thankful for that.’
‘And the fever’s down a bit,’ Bessie said. ‘That mustard plaster did the trick – I knew it would!’
‘Yes, but there’s a long way to go. We must make sure she doesn’t get out of bed too soon. You know what she’s like – can’t bear not to know what’s going on.’
‘Good job we’re not busy,’ Emily said gloomily. ‘Three cancellations this week. And that nice Mr Rawnsley hasn’t turned up, nor sent word, so I’m wondering if he’s gone down with the ‘flu.’
‘More than likely, but the fewer the better while Mamma’s ill. You’ve got enough on at the moment. Anyway,’ she sighed, ‘if you find yourselves short of money, just ask Blanche — she seems to have plenty.’
As if on cue, the budding couturier swept into the kitchen, pulling a short, fur-lined cape around her shoulders. ‘What have I got plenty of?’
‘Money,’ Louisa said bluntly, without turning round. ‘As guests are a bit thin on the ground, I thought you might help out.’
Blanche was volubly offended and tempers were short. The argument was cut short by Edward’s unexpected arrival.
His normally serene face was flushed and agitated, but Blanche barely spared him a glance. With a curt nod, she took the opportunity to escape, flinging a few coins onto the table as a parting gesture.
‘Conscience-money,’ Bessie muttered, but Louisa ignored it. Angry though she was, her over-stretched nerves registered at once that something was wrong.
‘It’s my mother,’ Edward said. ‘I think she may be dying.’
There was a sudden, stunned silence.
Louisa went to him, gripped his cold hands. ‘Why didn’t you send a message?’
‘They’re ill either side of us, and there was no one in across the way. It was quicker to come myself,’ he added bleakly. ‘I must go on to Dr Mackenzie’s.’
‘No, I’ll go,’ Louisa said, reaching for her coat. ‘You go straight home.’
When Bessie spoke, her voice was rough with emotion. ‘Can I come with you, Mr Edward? I’d like to. It may cheer her to see my old face. You’ll not want to be alone.’
Edward would rather have had Louisa as his companion, but with a brief nod and a final pressure on his cousin’s hand, he left immediately, leaving Bessie to follow as soon as she was able.
Like every other doctor in the city, Dr Mackenzie was finding his attention claimed by people who could barely afford the price of a prescription. In desperation they called him, yet there was little he could do. This influenza killed with speed, and not only the most vulnerable. He was out when Louisa called, but having left a message with his wife she returned home, wondering what, if anything, they should tell their mother.
It was decided to tell her nothing, to let the night be peaceful for her at least. With Emily sitting up for the first few hours, Louisa took a candlestick from the dresser and climbed the stairs to her top-floor room, the little flame casting leaping shadows on the steep and narrow wooden steps. It was bit
terly cold at the top of the house, frost still crusted the window-panes, obscuring the view of the Minster as effectively as any curtain. Shivering, she rapidly unfastened the dozen buttons of her navy worsted bodice, pressed the stud from its starched white inner collar, and unhooked the heavy skirt she wore. Fumbling in haste, she eventually loosened the ties of her stays, relief fighting the chill as she struggled to pull on her nightdress. Sliding between icy sheets, only then did Louisa remove her underclothes, finally pushing her arms into the sleeves of her nightgown before curling up tight beneath weighty covers.
As a tingling warmth gradually returned, she stretched out slowly, testing the cold areas of the bed as her feet made their way to the bottom. Her body began to relax, but her mind was resolutely wakeful, thinking of Edward, thinking with him, wondering if Elizabeth Elliott would divulge her secrets before she quit this world forever.
Never, to Louisa’s knowledge, had her aunt spoken of Edward’s father, nor of the circumstances which led to his conception. It might have been a secret to which Mary Elliott was party, but she had never hinted at it, and, for Edward, the mystery had always been something of an obsession. Sharing his dread of that knowledge going to the grave, Louisa held her cousin’s face, and her aunt’s, in her mind, offering them both in mute prayer to a God she was unsure of. The Old Testament tenet of the sins of the fathers being visited upon generations of innocent children weighed heavily as always, fighting her desire to believe in a God whose love was surely too broad and deep to take account of such things. Obeying childhood instruction, she prayed; her faith, however, was sadly lacking.
Five
Disturbed by a bleak sensation of doom, Louisa left her mother’s side shortly after six and made a pot of tea before waking her.
‘I have to go out,’ she said softly. ‘I want to see Edward before he goes to work.’
Still confused by the after-effects of sleep, Mary Elliott nodded unquestioningly. Louisa debated whether to say more.
In the end she said briefly: ‘Aunt Elizabeth is ill, and I want to see how she is.’ She looked long into her mother’s eyes, and unspoken fear seemed to hang between them. Patting the small hand on the coverlet, she turned away. ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked from the doorway. ‘Emily’s still asleep.’
‘Of course. You’d better hurry. Edward may need you.’
Forbearing to say that Bessie had been with him all night, Louisa hurried down the stairs, and was soon on her way through unlit streets towards Elizabeth Elliott’s house.
It was small, one of a terrace, with two rooms upstairs, two down. The front door opened straight into the parlour and was generally kept locked, so Louisa turned off before she reached it, into a lane that served the backs. Guided by a chink of light, she reached the rear of the house without mishap.
In the kitchen, her cousin was sprawled in an easy chair beside the range, the fire all but dead in the grate. In the soft light of an oil lamp, his hair was brushed with gold; long, waving strands falling forward across his forehead. Purple lines of weariness shadowed his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. Hidden by his beard, Edward’s chin lay wedged against his waistcoat, arms drooping like a dead man.
Alarm made her hasty. She shook him almost roughly, relief coinciding with his gasp of shocked awakening. Stiffly, he sat up, pushing the hair from his forehead, eyes cloudy with pain and confusion. Her heart went out to him. Without being told, she knew his mother was dead.
‘When?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. A while ago — an hour, maybe.’ He made a sound that was surprisingly like a laugh. ‘I came downstairs, and – just fell asleep. How stupid of me.’
‘No — you must be exhausted.’
‘Bessie’s with her. Do you want to go up?’
‘Not just yet.’ Still holding his hands, Louisa knelt on the floor in front of him, eyes intently searching his. ‘Oh, love, I’m sorry. So sorry,’ she repeated softly. Weighing the question she longed to ask, in the end she could not resist voicing it. ‘Did she say anything — before she died?’
Wearily, he shook his head. ‘For the last few hours, she wasn’t even conscious.’ As the anguish in him surfaced, he gripped her hands fiercely, squeezing his eyes tight shut against hot, flooding, uncontrollable tears.
Unable to bear the sight of his contorted face, she looked down, watching his fingers tighten, feeling the pain of his grasp, willing herself not to cry out. But as suddenly as it had begun, the frustrated outburst was over. He released her, dashing the tears away with the back of his hand. Finding a crumpled handkerchief, he wiped his face quickly, ashamed of his weakness. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not meeting her eyes.
‘Oh, Edward, don’t be. If you can’t weep with me, who can you weep with? I understand.’
From the depths of his bitterness, he turned on her. ‘How can you?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You knew your father. He loved your mother, and she loved him, and you remember that. But me? I’ve never had the slightest idea about my father! He could have been anyone. I don’t even know if my mother loved him. I could be the result of ungovernable passion, or simply a passing fancy after the harvest supper!’
Louisa winced. With a short, sardonic laugh, he said: ‘But it’s true, isn’t it? Or do you think she was taken advantage of? Always bearing in mind that my mother was over thirty at the time, of course!’
Distaste made her turn away. She longed to block her ears, shut out the bitter mockery of his words, but his voice pressed relentlessly on.
‘It’s hard to credit her with any kind of loving impulse. I don’t think she loved anyone in the whole of her life — not even me.’
‘Oh, Edward, you’re wrong!’
‘Am I?’ His eyes held hers for a long moment.
All the antipathy she had ever felt for his mother seemed to be drawn to the surface, shaming her. Louisa knew she should have been mourning her aunt’s passing, not remembering old resentments. Bewildered and unhappy, she simply pressed his hand.
‘I was twelve before you were born,’ he said quietly. ‘You don’t know how little love there was in my life before that date.’ The eyes which scanned her face were full of such tenderness and pain it was almost unbearable. Leaning her head against his shoulder, she thought of all the things that might have been, and felt a surge of impotent anger.
‘I was passed off as her nephew when I was a child, never her son. For years, I wasn’t even sure she was my mother – I thought she was dead. I was a man before she set me straight – told me I should be living with her, because she was, in fact, my mother. Did you know that? That’s when I said no thanks, I preferred to stay with her sister!’
He paused to draw breath. ‘She never forgave me. Refused to tell me anything about my father, so in the end I stopped asking. But then I started to realize she was getting older, that she might take the secret with her. If she couldn’t explain then, surely she could tell the truth to me now? Do you know what she said the last time, Louisa? She said she couldn’t see why it was of any interest to me!’
Feeling his bitterness, wanting to take it from him, Louisa hugged him closer, breathing in the familiar, reassuring smell of his working clothes. The scent of ink and leather took her back to childhood, except now their roles were curiously reversed. ‘She never understood you,’ she murmured.
‘I don’t think she even liked me very much,’ he confessed. ‘Although I suppose the feeling was mutual.’ After a while, he said wearily: ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I reminded her of him.’
Louisa drew back, trying to see him objectively, as she might have viewed a stranger. Except in colouring, he did not favour the Elliotts. The nose was too narrow, too aquiline; and his eyes, a light blue-grey, were deeper set. It was a sensitive, finely-featured face, hardly disguised by the beard grown in his twenties and kept ever since. Despite his strong, scarred hands and unremarkable clothes, Louisa had always thought the beard gave her cousin a rather romantic, poetic air, which was not at
all the impression he wished to convey. Remembering the teasing of long ago, she smiled. If Edward truly resembled his father, she thought, he must have been a handsome man.
But to say it would have embarrassed him. Instead, she asked whether he had approached her own mother on the subject.
‘Once, a few years ago. She said they were working in different places then, and she knew nothing.’
Louisa pursed her lips. ‘I find that hard to believe. She must know something. What about your mother’s papers?’
‘I doubt it,’ he replied shortly. ‘I shall go through them, of course, but it’s hardly likely...’He broke off with a gesture of impatience and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I shouldn’t have burdened you with all this. Forgive me?’
‘Not necessary,’ she said, reaching up to kiss his cheek. ‘I told you before – I understand.’
‘I know you do,’ Edward whispered. ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’
Something in his eyes caught painfully at her heart, sparking memories she preferred to leave in peace. Deliberately brisk, she stood up and set about coaxing the dying fire back into life. Suggesting her mother’s cure for all ills, she filled the kettle and set it to boil. ‘Because poor Bessie will be glad of some tea.’
‘Of course. Poor Bessie — I’d quite forgotten.’
Two candles burned steadily in the room where Elizabeth Elliott lay small and shrunken in a bed which seemed too big for her. The grey hair was neatly plaited, her face composed, hands folded over her thin breast.
Bessie looked worn and very tired.
‘She’s not properly laid out, Miss Louisa, but I wanted to pretty her up a bit, so I did her hair and washed her face and hands. Mr Edward’ll have to get a woman in to do it right.’
Louisa Elliott Page 4